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Comment by MadManE | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this, but I don't think that it accounts for everything. For example, my experience in Denver is that wages are below national average, but cost of living is much higher. The consensus that gets spouted here is that the opportunity to live near the mountains is great enough to offset whatever monetary discrepancy there is.

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This sounds very much like where I'm living. Asheville, NC is among the highest costs of living in NC but has among the lowest wages (cost of beer may be low, but I pay about the same for restaurant meals as I did in the DC area). But this is misleading because Asheville has among the richest of all zip codes in NC and even the US as well (Biltmore Forest's median household income in the zip code is $150k+). What also makes the statistics misleading is that a massive percentage of the population is retired which leads to a high percentage of cash-only home purchases which combined with the general lack of concern for value by many well-off retirees (many retirees here have multiple homes either in Florida or New Jersey) inflates housing for those that are still working.

The kids that keep flocking here seem to be fine with low wages in exchange for better quality of life than big cities - myself included. But "getting ahead" doesn't really exist here unless you're an incredibly talented restauranteur typically given the general lack of fast-growing industries that support much of a middle class besides healthcare. The culture here really does not respect greed very well unless you're already in the right social cliques that respect greed to some degree.

In short, I'd say that this socioeconomic is actually very representative of the problems that the US as a whole faces with generational gaps and opportunity gaps and shows that even if we eliminated race as an issue we'd still be left with surprisingly little difference in economic outcomes for labor (I think Asheville is something like 89%+ caucasian).

> For example, my experience in Denver is that wages are below national average, but cost of living is much higher. The consensus that gets spouted here is that the opportunity to live near the mountains is great enough to offset whatever monetary discrepancy there is.

While I don't know if that's actually true of Denver, its quite plausible that vacation destinations (like Denver's mountains) would drive up local real estate and consumables prices with competition for transient uses, while much of the economic activity associated with the vacationing uses would materialize elsewhere (with people buying nonconsumable supplies), driving up the cost of living more than they provide direct local economic activity.

Denver has traditionally been very close to the national average for cost of living, and also has average wages (much lower on both fronts than, say, San Francisco.)

In the last 3 years or so, rents have gone up largely because laborers who can't find work in other cities have been able to find work in or near Denver, driving up demand for housing while simultaneously driving down average wages. This is slowly being alleviated as new housing is being built, but it'll be a few more years before an equilibrium is reached.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I don't think that comparing anywhere to San Francisco yields many meaningful results, though. It's pretty much an outlier no matter how you look at it.

I would hazard to say that the legalization of pot has more to do with these troubles than anyone wants to admit to. It draws in people who subscribe to that lifestyle from a huge surrounding area (increasing demand for housing and supply of labor).

I'm not sure that equilibrium is really something that is in the cards here, anyway. The job market is just one piece of the puzzle, and the horrific city planning isn't doing anyone any favors.

Needless to say I'm aggressively looking for other places to be.

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